254

MRS, PEATTIE'S CANDIDACY
-----------------
Progress of Her Campaign for
Member of the Board of
Education.
------------
Letters From Wohueu in-lorsing Her-
What the Committee is Doing
to Elect Her.
------------------
Qualification for Voting---Something About
the Cand'de---Indorsed by Two
Conventions and One League.
------------------
The current issue of the Women's Weekly, the official organ of the Women's club of this city, prints several letters from club members in support of Mrs. Peattle's candidacy, among which were the following :
This year the women of Omaha have an opportunity to be represented upon the school board by one of their own number, whose abillity and public spirit neither republican, populist nor democratic, so the question of poltical affilations need not enter for a moment into consideration. Our schools are the great national nurseries of the republic, and fitness for the postion of school director is the only question that should concern us. With all due respect to the present board whose members perhaps devote a short time every week to the general neccessities of the schools, put off untile the last moment for action, it certainly seems as if a woman would know better how to arrange details, which are, after all, the most far reaching in their consequences.
If the mangement of the schools had been in the hands of the women, is it to be supposed that at this present stage of civilization, with all the talk about germs, bacill, ect., ad intiutm. that the women would have allowed childern of all sorts of conditions of men. in all stages of cleaniness ( I really want to rush into medical terms here, I know so much about it that it is a pitty I do not know a little more). with eczema and what not--to drink from a common cup. It is inconcelivable that this matter should have been neglacted so long. A women would see that her childern were surronded by the best possible conditions of health and morals. Men have apparently more important business in life than looking after childern, but a true mother will hold that to be her most important work, to which all other alma must sub-serve.
I once knew a lady who devoted her-self entirely to her childern. She said servants could not the work of the house, but her childern were too precious to he left to the care of hirelings. Teachers, who take the mother's place a few hours every day, should be selected with the greatest care. Only women can judge women in many ways. There seems to be a mental obliquity of vision in a man's judgment of a woman's fitness for many positions.
I hope the time will come when women physicans will have the general oversight of the health of school chidlern. that those who are coming down with contagious disease shall be detched at once before other childern are infected . A medical supervison should be exersied over all the schools, and very great attention should be paid to sanitary regulations. The city employs a man to run around and look after the cows, but childern are herded with very little attention to the places from which they come, brining with them germs of disease and death.
Perhaps a women on the school board will inaugrate new conditions at any rate, the honored member of the Woman's club who is a candiate for that postons will not be nonentilly.
Let the women of Omaha see to it that she is elected.
AUGUSTA B. HENDERSON.
Primarily, because women should have a direct voice in school matters.
The larger part of the teachers are women. but the authority under which they work is vested in men, now entirely. One woman will be but one of the school governing power, and that is little enough. Observation of the world's affair goes to show that what men and woman do toghter is better done than what either do alone. Men need women's capacity for minute and poinstaking detail--for keeping corners clean and beautfying the affair of life ; women need men's capcity for broad dealigt the carrying out of plans in the mass.
Secondarilly, because Mrs. Peattle, having had a large experience in public life, is by that fitted for such a position. Her philanthropic work in the city and her writings prove her a humantaian and a follower of the two great commndments on which hang all the law and the prophets.